It's getting to be about that time when the spring cleaning
bug rears its tidy little head. It's the time of year when
thoughts turn to organizing offices, cleaning out garages, donating
old clothing and "getting it together" in general. As
someone who doesn't like to let the opportunity of a clean, new
slate pass me by, I decided it was time to dig in and take a fresh
look at Personal Information Managers (PIMs).

Perhaps one of the best software inventions, PIMs help you keep
yourself and your business together--running on time and on track.
Although they won't do the filing that has been piling up for
months, they will help you sort out your contacts, schedules and
task lists. Of course, as with everything, it's "garbage
in/garbage out"--for PIMs to work to your advantage, you have
to do some work and be willing to change old habits and invent new
ones. Scheduling from within your computer has to become second
nature, as does the way in which you check for appointments
(whether you print out schedules to put in your paper-based
organizer or check the computer for your appointments every
morning).

All three programs reviewed here are the most current versions
available. They all run under Windows and are all equally
useful. Your decision of which to choose will be based less on
quality than on what functions work for you.

With all three of the following programs, you get tools for
scheduling and viewing appointments (choosing among day, week,
month and year views); and tracking contacts, including general
information (phone number, address, e-mail address and so on), as
well as room for additional contact notes (such as when called,
next call and so forth). Keeping in touch with clients is easy with
included letter-writing capabilities for creating and generating
form letters, and an automatic phone dialing feature. Alarms will
keep you on time, alerting you to everything from an upcoming phone
call to an important meeting.

Cassandra Cavanah is a contributing editor of Portable
Computing Direct Shopper magazine and has reported on the
computer industry for nine years.

On One Side...

Sidekick has always been my PIM of choice. It's easy to work
with and has numerous key functions that meet my needs. With
Sidekick 98, Starfish Software has taken this program's
portability to a whole new level. This program comes with TrueSync
synchronization software for synching up your calendar, contacts
and other information with portable devices, like the ultra-thin
credit-card-sized Rolodex Electronic REX and 3Com's PalmPilot.
This means Sidekick users can easily take their data on the
road--while leaving their desktop computers at home. There's no
need to even print out the information and put it in a traditional
paper-based organizer. Once on the road with Sidekick, users can
make changes to their data and then synch it up with the data on
their desktop computers back at their offices.

Another new feature of this program is Sidekick Web Publisher
for automatically generating HTML pages. With just a click of the
mouse, I automatically created HTML files of all my contacts (or
card files) and could view them from within my Netscape browser--a
great feature.

Users can either use the defaults to simply post exactly what
they have in their database or can opt to manipulate the data for
appropriate on-screen viewing. There's also been an enhancement
to Sidekick's e-mail functionality, so users can easily
integrate their e-mail address book with Sidekick; support for
Eudora Pro, Netscape mail, Microsoft Exchange and Windows Address
Book are included. For those who cruise the Web looking for contact
information, there's support for vCard--a standard that lets
users easily drag and drop data from Web-based information sites
(such as http://www.four11.com).

There's also a scheduling wizard for setting up appointments
with numerous participants. All you do in Sidekick is enter the
event, select the participants (who can be notified automatically
by e-mail, phone or pager) and wait for the responses. The
EarthTime module within Sidekick makes keeping in touch with
associates around the globe fairly simple because you can quickly
ascertain the time almost anywhere in the world.

One Day At A Time

Day-Timer knows a lot about organization. It's basically
recreated its paper-based organizer as a software tool. The two
versions can easily work in conjunction, making it simple to become
a Day-Timer Organizer software user if you are already a
traditional Day-Timer user. The part I like best is Day-Timer's
customized computer paper that lets you easily print schedules and
address book pages to place in your Day-Timer notebook. While I
find Sidekick's printing procedures difficult to follow and
plagued with spotty results, Day-Timer has smartly created a
onetime setup procedure that makes it possible to seamlessly print
from your printer. Within 10 minutes, I was printing beautifully
laid-out pages that easily fit into my same-size Filofax
notebook.

Just as you can choose between
day-at-a-glance, week-at-a-glance and month-at-a-glance views
when using paper-based Day-Timers, you can do the same with this
software. It's easy to switch between the views to check out
your schedules, to-do lists, events and so on.

The address book is simple to use--you can easily import data
from other databases into Day-Timer. Keeping contact information on
the entries in your address book is also easy. There are plenty of
preset action items to choose from, and activities are simple to
record. For example, if you want to make a phone call, Day-Timer
can dial the phone number (as can all other PIMs reviewed here),
and with a click of the mouse, you can indicate whether you spoke
to the person or left a message. You can also time the duration of
the call and schedule a follow-up.

Day-Timer Organizer also takes advantage of a network for
workgroup functions, making it possible to do group scheduling,
share information, delegate tasks and send basic messages.
Synchronizing your data with another computer is also relatively
simple, though not as seamless as the standardized TrueSync
capabilities offered in Sidekick. I also didn't find Day-Timer
as easy to navigate as Sidekick.

Information, Please

This is the least-known of the products reviewed here. Published
by Baseline Data Systems, Info Accelerator is slowly making its
mark as an impressive alternative to more well-known products.
Available only via the company's Web site, Info Accelerator is
an impressive contender for the top PIM slot.

My favorite feature of this software is its omnipresent tool bar
that makes hopping in and out of the program incredibly convenient.
The tool bar resides in your start-up folder in Windows 95, letting
you access your phone book, calendar, notes and so on. More
impressive still is its SmartLink technology, which lets you easily
transfer data from one application to another. From within
Microsoft Word, for example, users can highlight text and place it
into Info Accelerator's phone book or grab a name and address
from the phone book and import it into a Word document. It's
seamless. Similar functionality is available for such programs as
Quicken, QuickBooks, Timeslips, Eudora, Excel and more. This is a
very powerful tool.

The phone book feature offers more functionality than the same
feature of the other PIMs reviewed here--it has more contact
management functions. The calendar feature is also incredibly
strong--it's easy to navigate and gives you plenty of options
so you can organize the way you want to.

If your office is networked, you can opt for the network version
of this product, which is capable of running under any Windows
network. With this version, you can share data and schedule
meetings.

Baseline also shipped me QuickNotes, a separate program ($59.95)
that, on a very basic level, is like a "Post-It" program
for your computer. But QuickNotes is much more than that. First,
the notes can be up to 10,000 characters long, you can place notes
in an unlimited number of file folders with subfolders if you
choose, and you can search for notes, color code them, set alarms
and more. This is a program I could quickly integrate into my daily
work style.

Decisions, Decisions

Sidekick is great for people who want to take their data on the
road using a small handheld computer device, like the REX or
PalmPilot. Day-Timer Organizer makes great sense for those already
addicted to a paper-based Day-Timer system. This is not to say this
program doesn't stand on its own, but traditional Day-Timer
users will certainly find it useful.

Finally, if I were embarking on my first PIM, I would probably
opt for Info Accelerator. This program makes it easy to embrace
this new way of working because it's readily available within
all your applications and is thoroughly un-intimidating.

Hot Disks

Remote DeskLink: If you're like most entrepreneurs, you can
probably be found sitting at your desk into the wee hours of the
night. Why not find a way to take those projects home? Traveling
Software's Remote DeskLink lets anyone with a Windows 95
computer work from home or when traveling. This means you can
remotely update documents and spreadsheets, reply to e-mail and
more. Remote DeskLink is easy to use and costs $49.99. For more
information, call (800) 343-8080 or visit http://www.travsoft.com

Revision Master 1.0: Documents such as business proposals and
sales letters often go through the revision ringer several times
before they make it out the door. Diehl Graphsoft's Revision
Master lets you easily store, track and retrieve any version of a
document. This product is capable of tracking virtually any type of
Windows 95 document, such as HTML files, spreadsheets, images,
e-mail messages and photos. You can look up previous versions of
the document, trace changes and more. For more details, visit
http://www.diehlgraphsoft.com

PhotoMAX Image Maker Software: Polaroid is taking its easy
photography expertise and applying it to the digital imaging world.
PhotoMAX is designed to take the difficulty out of capturing,
editing and using digital images. Working with the Polaroid
PhotoMAX PDC300 Digital Camera Creative Kit--the first truly
consumer-friendly digital camera and software
package--Polaroid's PhotoMAX combines six digital imaging
applications in a single graphical user interface to offer
consumers all the techniques needed to manipulate images. Polaroid
also includes DogByte Development's Sticker Store software,
which features quality artwork with the ability to add images to
cyber and printed greeting cards, insert them onto cool
backgrounds, apply them to T-shirts and more. PhotoMAX costs
$59.95; the complete PhotoMAX Digital Camera Creative Kit is
$349.99. Check out http://www.polaroid.com or call (800)
343-5000.